Why You Should Explain What You Need

As babies, we could get people to do things for us without needing to say anything.  Adults would correctly surmise that we crave some milk or that the sun is shining in our eyes, or that we're ready for a snooze. 

While this is highly gratifying and important in infancy, it can be dangerous if we keep these expectations for the rest of our lives. It can breed the idea that anyone who claims to know us should be able to determine our deepest aspirations and wishes without us needing to say much. 

We may assume that others must know what we want without telling them. We presume our lover must understand what we're upset about, that our colleagues must intuitively know what we want to be done.  

Then we assume that if they don't, it must be a sign that they deliberately refuse or that they're wicked. So we justify our sulk, where we punish people for having committed offences while refusing to reveal the offences to them.

Teaching is a skill we should put into practice daily. The subject we must patiently become experts and give lessons in is called "ourselves": what we like, what we fear, what we're hopeful about, what we want from the world.

It is understandable when we should fail in our teaching duties because we never had to bother with all that in the early years.